Raspberry Pi vs. Orange Pi

In the last few years, mini Linux boards have become almost as popular as popcorn. The Raspberry Pi is the most known model, but is it really better? Let’s look at some specs and find out. The Raspberry Pi 3 includes: a cortex A53 quad-core processor clocked to 1.2GHz, 10/100 ethernet, Bluetooth 4.1, 1GB DDR2, wireless LAN, and 1080p video. What a lot of nice features! The Raspberry Pi costs only $30 making it a very affordable option for IoT. Another competing Linux IoT board is the Orange Pi. When I first discovered the Orange Pi, I was immediately quite skeptical and decided my Raspberry Pi must be much better. Nevertheless, I decided to check the specs and was quite astounded by what I found. The Orange Pi Plus2e includes: a cortex A7 quad-core 1.3GHz processor, Gigabit ethernet, 2GB DDR3, an infrared transmitter, 16GB onboard eMMC storage (eliminating the need for an SD card) and 4k video. Although both the devices work with similar Linux distributions, the Orange Pi has better RAM, ethernet, graphics, and onboard storage. The only downside of the Orange Pi is that it lacks Bluetooth, but this can be rectified by adding a USB Bluetooth dongle. It also costs slightly more at $44 instead of just $30 for the Raspberry Pi. Among the many Linux boards on the market these two are probably the most popular. Although the Raspberry Pi is the flagship, the Orange Pi is ahead in the race on many counts of performance and usability. In my opinion, the Raspberry Pi is better for smaller projects and the Orange Pi for larger ones. But the final choice is up to you.